The storm is coming. This morning the sky was blue, but now the clouds are hiding the sun and the small patch of blue is closing in on itself. It feels like fall again. The crispy leaves are falling and spotting the grass below the trees. Some years we get so much snow so quickly that the leaves don’t get a chance to crisp up before they are torn from the trees. That’s winter in Utah.   I am just an old country boy in a big town trying to get along. I have been eating pretty regular and the reason I have been is because I have stayed an old country boy.             Will Rogers

We are the west. This is the state where so many cowboy movies were filmed. Our red rocks of Zion are famous and the area is still used to film desert scenes. Why is it that westerns never show the winter? I’m not talking about the slick westerns like Lonesome Dove. I’m talking the westerns that make the rest of the world think about us. Clint Eastwood and Gary Cooper never fumbled with mittens in a gun fight. When the rest of the world imagines the West, they think of those cowboys.

Does the rest of the world know about Utah winters? When I went to college, we had a student from Great Britain. He was shocked at our winter. I admit that we had an unusually cold winter that year. You could feel the wet air freeze the hairs in your nose that winter. I have to rub my nose just thinking about it now. He didn’t come back to Westminster the next year. I probably shouldn’t blame our winter for that. It was probably our watered down beer; he was British, after all.

Cover a war in a place where you can’t drink beer or talk to a woman?
Hell no!” Hunter S. Thompson (1939 – )

They have warned us about the storm all week. It’s supposed to be the first snow of the year. It’s supposed to be a big one. The sun just peeked out from the clouds to contradict the weatherman. I think they don’t know anything. Sure, there is a nip in the air. It’s supposed to get colder in the Fall. That doesn’t mean that winter is here already. I think the weathermen are just yes-men for the ski resorts. Snowbird tell the weatherman that he has an offer that he can’t refuse and there suddenly is a big storm planned for today. Park City tells the other weatherman to predict snow and he jumps. I can imagine the owners of the resorts to be like mob bosses. Instead of councilmen, they have weathermen in their pockets. I guess I’m wrong. The sun went back into hiding.

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672), ‘Meditations Divine and Moral,’ 1655 Snow or not, I know that summer is gone. It might not be winter yet, but I do know that my tank tops and short shorts are put away for the season. I am so grateful for the seasons. The summer makes me grateful for the winter and the winter makes me excited for the summer. Bring it on, West Wind! Roll in those clouds! If winter must come, let it come with silver-plated glory.